


The Princess Mark

by AdinelleGgreeo



Series: Iris and Rowena [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: High School, Magic, Magic-Users, Magical Tattoos, Moving, One Shot, Original Fiction, School, Short One Shot, Tattoos, Teenagers, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdinelleGgreeo/pseuds/AdinelleGgreeo
Summary: 'Rowena has always had these markings on her body. They move and glow and tell her life's story.A new one just appeared and she's not sure what to make of it.'Short story ideas about a witch and a princess.
Series: Iris and Rowena [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858417





	The Princess Mark

**Author's Note:**

> My first post here! This is just a little piece of a bigger story that I have floating around in my head. I'm still woking on world building for what I have in mind , but I think in the mean time, I'll write more like this. It's good practice!
> 
> Critique is welcome! I haven't had my writing looked at since high school!

Rowena and her mother had recently moved to a new part of the kingdom. It was … an inevitable happening and a much-needed one. It was also, it seemed yet another important moment in her life, for it was branded across her chest as a beautiful and glittering rendition of their new cottage home.

Rowena’s dark skin was covered head to toe in iridescent markings. For the first few moments of existing in this world, she was as bare as the untouched page of a new sketchbook. Then a little heart, pulsing with all the colours that the eye could see bloomed into existence right where her navel would be once the umbilical cord was cut. And there it has remained throughout her sixteen years of life, a tender reminder of the love she was born from.

She has others. So many others. They moved across her skin sometimes, going to whichever part of her body they pleased. 

She had her first words in the hollow of her throat. Small and shaky, almost incoherent as babies tended to be in their speaking. It liked to dance across her throat when she spoke. She had the imprint of a braided friendship bracelet wrapped around a wrist to commemorate her first friendship. The beads would noiselessly clank together when she moves her hand. 

Her first heartbreak wrapped itself around her torso as a rope of thorns. It was not the romantic kind, but it didn’t hurt any less. She learned that day that her little world wasn’t all nice and children could be cruel. It seemed an insignificant thing now, but the movement of them painlessly tightening around her wouldn’t let her forget how much it affected her. 

Her first real loss stayed firmly over her heart as a tiny ornate hourglass with sand frozen in time.

She eventually figured out the pattern. These were permanent reminders of significant moments and people she encountered in life. Both good and bad. She’d rather not have the bad ones. And the sad ones. Those are things one would like to forget. 

Despite being one of the only people she knew with somewhat sentient, glowing tattoos, it hasn’t been something that made her stick out. Not more than she usually did anyway. The magical society had many strange and bizarre beings trotting through its streets. One more wasn’t unusual. The questions made her uncomfortable, though. Her markings quite literally told her life story and they were not anyone else’s business. 

So she covered up a bit.

A lacy blouse with its long sleeves covered the shapes that wrap around her arm and her metal cuffs already have her wrists hidden away. Lines and swirls crept up and down her fingers, but those were small and went unnoticed. The high collar covered most of her neck. It couldn’t quite hide the dancing shapes under her chin that liked to creep up her cheek, but that was fine. She wore her hair in a big, puffy afro and that distracted. Dark jeans and pointed black boots, sometimes a long walking skirt and stockings obscured the markings up and down her ankles, shins, knees and thighs.

People tended to ask her where she got her clothes instead.

She never hid her face. She didn’t want to, but these things seemed to want to test her. They liked to traverse the plains of her lower face, rarely going further than that. Even rarer were those that manifested there, but at that moment, looking at herself in her bathroom mirror, getting ready for her first day of a new school, a rather grand one came into existence.

It covered the entirety of the left half of her face.

Under her eye was a small visage, a soft oval shape with its eyes closed tight. Curls and swirls surrounded it. A long fringe nearly covered its eyes and the rest flowed out, floating, swaying, waving. Past Rowena’s eye and over her brow, on her nose and lips and down past her chin, disappearing into her shirt. 

Above her eyebrow was a little tiara with a tiny leaf-shaped gem at its centre. The whole image glowed with a green light, brighter than any of her markings have glowed before.

All of this made up a picture of someone she recognized well but had never even seen in person.

The image tilted its head. And then a little heart-shaped smile appeared on its face.

Her face.

Rowena suddenly threw herself away from the mirror, covering her cheek with a hand. A strangled squeal left her throat as she scrabbled around behind herself for the doorknob.

“Muuuuum!”

What was the Princess of Verbena doing on her face?


End file.
